It’s the birthday of British philosopher and writer William Godwin (1756 – 1836), who believed in the “absolute sovereignty and competence of reason” and in “man’s future perfectibility” (www.britannica.com), and I think we’re all just glad he’s not around today to see how that turned out. In 1794 he published his three-volume ideological novel, Things as They Are; or The Adventures of Caleb Williams. (Nothing makes me want to read a novel quite like hearing it described as “ideological.”) The novel was a smashing success commercially and garnered critical reviews on extreme ends of the spectrum: Godwin was spreading evil principles of anarchy throughout society, or he “blazed as the sun in the firmament of reputation” (William Hazlitt, “The Spirit of the Age”). Ten life points to anyone out there who has read this novel. No, fifteen. Fifteen life points.

Godwin was also the father of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, so there’s that.

On a lighter, less ideological note, it’s also the birthday of Patricia MacLachlan, born in 1938 in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and best known as the author of the Newbery Medal-winning children’s novel, Sarah, Plain and Tall. In this novel set in the late 1800s, a widowed farmer with two young children places an ad for a bride, which Sarah answers. Heartwarming bonding ultimately ensues. MacLachlan wrote four more books for this series, the first three of which were made into movies starring Glenn Close and Christopher Walken as the grownups.

MacLachlan has written many other books as well, ranging from picture books to middle grade novels. She lives in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, with her husband but carries a bag of prairie dirt wherever she goes to remind herself of her prairie upbringing.

Have a lazy or productive Saturday depending on where you are with the grocery situation, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.